Santorum: 'We Can Do Better' Than Obamacare

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has proposed a healthcare system that he says is more flexible, increases competition, and offers more choices than Obamacare, which takes away from Americans the basic freedom of choice, the former Pennsylvania senator writes in an Op-Ed in USA Today.

“We can do better,” Santorum says.

“Obamacare prohibits health savings accounts, and turns the insurance industry into a federally controlled public utility,” Santorum wrote. “My plan would allow all Americans to shop around and get their health insurance on the open market — just like they buy other kinds of insurance.”

Santorum also envisions a system of state-run risk pools for those with “health conditions that make insurance companies unwilling to take them, such as my little daughter Bella.”

“We don't want to destroy America's advantage as the world's leader in innovative medicine. Since the mid-1970s, American residents hold more medical technology patents and have won more Nobel Prizes in medicine than residents of other countries combined.

“America has forever been the world's last bastion of freedom. For generations, we have fought to preserve the principles of liberty. Freedom and liberty are at the core of my health care proposal. Individuals, not the government, can and should make health care choices for themselves.”

Santorum notes that the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that as many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided health insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law currently before the Supreme Court and that premium costs will rise.

“Obamacare — based on Romneycare, the plan Massachusetts adopted when Mitt Romney was governor — tells insurance companies which benefits their policies must offer and what range of prices they could charge,” Santorum wrote. “It requires that individuals buy conforming policies, and cuts $500 billion from Medicare. The Independent Payment Advisory Board will limit what treatments doctors can prescribe.

“Consistent with the principles upon which our country was founded, Americans know that Obamacare is bad policy, bad medicine, bad for the country and badly needs repeal. Republicans need a nominee with the credibility to take on President Obama on an issue vital to voters, and a president who will repeal Obamacare. I will be that president.”